Photo: US Department of Defense .
On Wednesday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it had sent more than a million rounds of ammunition seized from Iran to the Ukrainian armed forces. The ammunition was delivered on Monday.
“The government took possession of the ammunition on July 20, 2023, through a forfeiture order filed by the Department of Justice against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In March, the US Justice Department announced a recall of one million Iranian rounds of ammunition, thousands of proximity fuses for rocket-propelled grenades, and thousands of pounds of propellant for these grenades, which the US Navy seized from Iran while they were being shipped to Yemen.
“This ammunition was seized by the Central Command naval forces from the unflagged sailing vessel MARWAN 1 on December 9, 2022. This ammunition was en route from the IRGC to the Houthis in Yemen, in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2216.”
The Biden administration has been considering for months how to legally ship the seized weapons to Ukraine, where they were stored at CENTCOM facilities in the Middle East.
Over the past year, the U.S. Navy has seized thousands of rifles from Iran and more than a million rounds of ammunition from ships carrying weapons originating from Iran to Yemen. These seizures are often carried out by local forces, targeting stateless vessels in the sea lanes commonly used to smuggle weapons to the Houthis in Yemen.
In mid-January 2023, the US assisted French forces in seizing 3,000 assault rifles being shipped from Iran to Yemen, along with 23 anti-tank guided missiles. Following the seizure, the US government claimed ownership of the seized weapons.
According to CENTCOM, the seizures of illegally transported weapons ended after two months, the US and its partners seized a total of 5,000 weapons and 1.6 million rounds of ammunition.
The US Justice Department and defense officials have been working to find a legal route to send these weapons to Ukraine, and one of those routes is through civil forfeiture agencies.
The Justice Department has filed two complaints seeking the seizure of Iranian ammunition and weapons in 2023. In addition to the March announcement, the Justice Department also announced in July that it was seeking the return of “more than 9,000 rifles, 284 machine guns, approximately 194 rocket launchers, more than 70 anti-tank guided missiles, and more than 700,000 rounds of ammunition” seized by the US Navy from Iran.
“Ukraine needs a lot of aid to bolster its war effort, and while this is not a solution to all of Ukraine’s needs, it would still provide significant support,” said Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow and director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security, who wrote an op-ed urging the United States to send weapons seized from Iran to Ukraine.
Lord also said the decision could also have a potential message about relations between Iran and Russia.
“For more than a year, Iranian UAVs in the hands of the Russian military have been used to attack Ukraine. That Ukraine can use weapons seized from Iran against Russian forces is a kind of ironic justice. Besides, this policy can also put pressure on the growing relations between Moscow and Tehran.”
The decision could cause a rift between Iran and Russia, two countries that have been working on a defense cooperation relationship for months, in which Iran supplies drones to Russia and Russia cooperates with Iran on missile and air defense equipment production programs.
Nguyen Quang Minh (according to CNN)
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